My first 17 Rules for Fiction Substack
"Rule" is easier to write than "guideline." These rules only have relevance to you if you choose to adopt them as your own, and even then, you're free to break them.
I’ve collected some helpful articles on my mini classes page, and if you’re actually new to Substack, that would be a good follow-up to this list.
Rule 1: Be slow to spend money.1
Rule 2: Promotions are money well-spent.2
Rule 3: Read and consider using The Right-Reader Method.3
Rule 4: Avoid writing about writing or writing about Substack.4
Rule 5: Build up a readership before jumping into serial fiction.5
Rule 6: Start with articles. Introduce standalone short stories once you have a sufficient readership, and use a novella for your first serial.6
Rule 7: Pay attention to all points of introduction but primarily in your app profile. State the promise of your newsletter and your history as it relates to that promise.7
Click on the image to visit the storefront or sign up at Whop.com/bookmotion.
Rule 8: Form a community or join the community in the Literary Salon chat. You need people who will support what you write.8
Rule 9: Create a direct-sales bookstore at Payhip or Fourthwall and promote your bookstore from every post.9
Rule 10: Plan what books you will offer free and which you will discount and where.10
Rule 11: Be active in Notes and any other social media where you are successfully reaching people.11
Rule 12: Be generous in your interactions and avoid being overbearing in your self-promotion.12
Rule 13: Be patient. What you’re putting into place now will pay off when you’ve increased your audience tenfold.13
Rule 14: Promises made to earn paid subscribers can become a self-made trap.14
Rule 15: To win over and keep paid subscribers, think in terms of products, not services.15
Rule 16: One visible call-to-action at a time.16
Rule 17: Consider self-publishing wide, and include a link to your newsletter in the back of your eBooks.17
Bonus 18: Make your pinned post like a landing page for your bookstore and the book you're featuring at the moment.
—Thadeus Thomas
Even if you have the means and the will to spend money on selling your fiction, there are too many ways to throw money away as a fiction writer. My advice tends not to cover how to write, what to write, editing, or covers, and those last two have been huge cash dumps for many of us. I’m not telling you not to pay for an editor and professional looking cover. We just don’t want to think that if we’re throwing money around, we’re solving our problems. Do everything you can on the cheap and free, and when you determine a spot where you really need to spend money, chances are, you’ll be spending wisely.
Bookfunnel. StoryOrigin. And my own Bookmotion (and my related Bookfunnel services) are all worth consideration. Bookfunnel costs $100 a year, but if you go through me, I manage your promotions and it only costs you $80 a year. Bookmotion promotions run less. StoryOrigin is the most expensive option.
Avoid newsletter bloat where you end up writing more newsletters than you can handle. Nonfiction sites pay off the quickest when you have credentials in the field, but stellar writing skills can overcome a lack of credentials. If you don’t have either (writing articles is a different skill than writing fiction), growth will take longer.
You can do both, of course. I am, but there are drawbacks. First, readers (as opposed to writers) don’t care about any of it. It doesn’t help readers engage with your material, and if you’re going to take that risk, consider a separate newsletter. Second, see point one. There are so many people looking to profit off of writers, whether they be scams or legit, that you are immediately received with a skeptical eye.
When your new, few people are reading your work. You need enough of an audience to give your first chapter a strong launch. When they fall behind, they may jump back in to catch up, but if they’ve not yet begun, it will be hard to pull in readers to a story already underway.
What counts as sufficient readership is more an emotional call on your part rather than a numerical fact.
The about page. The welcome-won’t-you-pay-to-subscribe page, and your welcoming emails all need your attention and should be revisited once at a month. By then, the material you wrote will strange and meaningless to you and will not resemble the reality of your newsletter in the slightest. This is normal. I blame gremlins.
If you attempt to create your own community and succeed, your greatest danger will be in not realizing what a miracle just occurred. It’s not easy when you’re small, and that’s when you need it most.
There will always be new options, but those are currently strong choices. My bookstore is at Laterpress, but I plan on moving it. ReamStories doesn’t appeal to me for this purpose, although you may benefit from having your books there.
Offer a book (free or discount) in your welcome email, but it shouldn’t be the same book you’re giving away free in promotions. Books are free when the point is not that they will be read—such as in promotions for newsletter subscriptions. The first in a series, etc., where you mean for the book to be read, should be offered at a discount. Some of your books should be at full price. For me, that’s $4.99 for a novel and $2.99 for a novella. That price sets the perceived value of your work.
Make a Facebook page for your work if you haven’t already and link to your newsletter. Promote it weekly now, while it’s still not a big concern. When the time comes that you want to advertise on Facebook, you’ll be in a better position than if you wait.
Restack. Like. Comment. Often. And be bold in promoting your work without shouting at people are overselling yourself. Don’t apologize for your existence or hide behind equivocating language, as both extremes turn away readers. If you think you may have been guilty of these things, don’t worry about it. Just focus on learning to confidently state the value of your work.
Sales will be random and rare at first. With a larger audience, they will become regular.
Dedicating materials to subscribers only is like launching another newsletter. If you’re already in that situation and desperate for a way out, make the dedicated materials open to free subscribers and comp your paid subscribers an extra 6-12 months, and let them know about the gift.
A product is something that takes time and effort at the beginning but then runs with less ongoing effort. A service requires a steady level of ongoing effort. My efforts with Bookmotion are to create a product which will one day only accept new customers from among my paid subscribers. Fourthwall allows you to easily sell branded items—just be sure you own the rights to the image your branding. Purchasing an image for a cover doesn’t mean you have the rights to use the same image on merchandise.
I have four calls-to-action on this page, but they’re spaced to present themselves one at a time.
The end goal is to create super fans who talk about your books. Publishing wide will help ensure that they people they tell will be able to find your books without having to actually hunt down your newsletter. Once they’ve bought and read a book, however, you want to secure them as part of your audience. Include that link to your newsletter in the back of the eBook so that you’re speaking to them while the power of the story is at its peak.
And now…
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There’s no feeling in the world like a bookstore—and when it’s a single-author bookstore where you’re buying directly from the writer, that’s a magic all its own.
Steampunk Cleopatra: From the title I was expecting swashbuckling adventures against a vaguely Egyptian backdrop, but instead I found a finely crafted and exhaustively researched work of historical fiction, full of mesmerizing detail. The book is studded with details that make the world seem richer and slightly more unfamiliar than you'd expect. These are embedded in a story of palace intrigue, scholarly curiosity and - most importantly - several very different kinds of love.
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Thank you for this! I kinda just decided I wanted to write the fiction I've dreamed of since I was a kid and started flailing about. Now I have a list of "well-thought-out practices" from an experienced pro!
Not certain what articles to write, but I'll give it a go. It's always good to widen one's writing skills.